Hotel Accommodations
I recommend the Hyatt at McCormick Place . It's the closest decent hotel to the Hyde Park area. More basic dorm-style accommodations may be found for $60-70 in the University's International House , which is right across the street from the Laboratory Schools. If you choose to stay at I-House, let them know you are attending a conference at the Laboratory Schools and give them my contact information if they have questions.
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU STAY AT THE RAMADA INN IN HYDE PARK. It is dirty, poorly run, and not secure.
Parking and Transportation
Visitor parking may be available in the designated area on the east side of Kimbark just before 59th Street. A curb painted green and visitor parking signage identifies these spaces. Other spaces nearby are permit only, and you will likely be ticketed if you park there. If no visitor spaces are available, seeking street parking is your next best option. Spaces on the street can be very hard to find, so leave extra time. The free lot at the corner of 60th St. and Stony Island Avenue is a good bet, but that is a ten-minute walk from the Laboratory Schools.
There are several good public transportation options; both Metra and the CTA offer convenient service to the UC campus.
Security
Enter the School through Judd Hall, 5835 S. Kimbark Ave. Please check in with the Judd Hall Public Safety Coordinator to sign in and receive a visitor’s pass. S/he may also direct you to the appropriate location to pick up a visitor parking permit if you found a visitor’s space on Kimbark Avenue. S/he will also page me via 2-way radio to come and pick you up. Please don't be alarmed or put off if security seems unusually tight this close to the Presidential election.
Dinner Options
I am happy to host dinner for anyone coming in the night before. Numerous campus haunts offer a variety of dining options, or we can head up to Chinatown, Greektown, or downtown if you wish. And I'm always up for a frosty beverage after dinner as well.
Please enter your name below if you are interested in meeting for dinner:
Name and Food Preference
Agenda Items
Please list agenda items of interest to you:
Review of One-to-One Computing in 2008
Where do we stand?
How many of our schools have this fully implemented at this time?
If so, in what grade levels??
How many of us have a plan in place to adopt 1-1 in the near future?
How are these machines purchased or leased and maintained? (Linda Danforth, Brookfield Academy
What, if any, impact have iPhones had on your school's day to day functioning?
Type of curriculum being used for classes? Software that others may recommend?
Anyone using interactive white boards? what kind are recommended?
My school (Da Vinci Academy) is going through the self study phase of the accreditation process. Being a newbie to schools and teaching, any hints or suggestions to help me survive the accreditation process would be appreciated.
From Jim Kidston (can't be here): interested in user experiences with Blackbaud's web-based hosting
Agenda Items: Follow Up from Meeting
1:1: Inclination to work with tablets vs. laptops, a few around the table going that way, many folks at the carts stage. Catherine Cook, Lake Forest Country Day doing tablets and so far, so good. Pairing tablets with wireless projectors a winner. Other schools that haven't started down that road yet are seeing more kids bringing laptops of their own each year and may have lost the initiative to do a formal program. As laptops/iPhones price drops make it more like a commodity, and cloud computing renders platform choice irrelevant, some school will arrive at 1:1 eventually without doing a program per se.
Keith Gillette did a nice overview of Netbooks, a preview of his presentation tomorrow at IASBO/IL-TCE joint event in Naperville.
They are gaining market share quickly and performance specs are far advanced from the original OLPC model. He sees a place for them as a cloud computing appliance that may be particularly well suited for younger kids due to the form factor.
Little iPhone impact on schools as yet. More licenses for WebSense and longer lines outside the Dean's office are reported.
Interactive whiteboards: Several school installing them in all classrooms or in the process of. Latin recommends saving big $$ by doing the installs yourself if you can and mounting them at lower heights for younger kids...they build a plywood step covered with carpeting to help kids get up to board level. Schools with tablets and wireless projectors get the interactivity they're looking for without the whiteboards; software like DyKnow increases usability. Curt recommended attending the InfoComm conference, the a/v industry's mega conference, for the best way to get training and talk to all the big a/v vendors directly.
Just a little feedback about Blackbaud web-based hosting, and it was good.
Some discussion of enabling parent access to online gradebooks. No one really doing it, some because it hasn't come up, others because it has and they decided not to. Some schools moving toward saving grade report mailing by opening interim and quarter/semester grade reports to parents for a limited time window and not
in real time all the time.
Curt recommended the Basecamp project management suite, an online tool offered by 37signals.com . Great design, good functionality, intuitive navigation, can invite "clients" in to collaborate on project. A great package for a small to medium sized workgroup to manage IT projects. Easy email integration, RSS, iCal...Curt would recommend it anyway, but also is an affiliate who gets a finder's fee if subscribers go through him.
Curt would also be happy to organize an LMAIS social gathering during NAIS here in Chicago this winter. Let him know if you are interested.
NEXT MEETING: April 16, 2009, tentatively hosted by Lake Forest Academy (thanks, Dave).
Also a big plug for these events:
k12 Online Conference : great look at web 2.0, lots of support for newbies, many activities both synchronous/asynchronous, and FREE!!!
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools
1362 East 59th StreetChicago IL 60637
773-702-9450
http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/
http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/about/maps.shtml
Curt Lieneck, Director of Information Technology
773-834-1863
clienec@ucls.uchicago.edu
Hotel Accommodations
I recommend the Hyatt at McCormick Place . It's the closest decent hotel to the Hyde Park area. More basic dorm-style accommodations may be found for $60-70 in the University's International House , which is right across the street from the Laboratory Schools. If you choose to stay at I-House, let them know you are attending a conference at the Laboratory Schools and give them my contact information if they have questions.
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU STAY AT THE RAMADA INN IN HYDE PARK. It is dirty, poorly run, and not secure.
Parking and Transportation
Visitor parking may be available in the designated area on the east side of Kimbark just before 59th Street. A curb painted green and visitor parking signage identifies these spaces. Other spaces nearby are permit only, and you will likely be ticketed if you park there. If no visitor spaces are available, seeking street parking is your next best option. Spaces on the street can be very hard to find, so leave extra time. The free lot at the corner of 60th St. and Stony Island Avenue is a good bet, but that is a ten-minute walk from the Laboratory Schools.There are several good public transportation options; both Metra and the CTA offer convenient service to the UC campus.
Security
Enter the School through Judd Hall, 5835 S. Kimbark Ave. Please check in with the Judd Hall Public Safety Coordinator to sign in and receive a visitor’s pass. S/he may also direct you to the appropriate location to pick up a visitor parking permit if you found a visitor’s space on Kimbark Avenue. S/he will also page me via 2-way radio to come and pick you up. Please don't be alarmed or put off if security seems unusually tight this close to the Presidential election.Dinner Options
I am happy to host dinner for anyone coming in the night before. Numerous campus haunts offer a variety of dining options, or we can head up to Chinatown, Greektown, or downtown if you wish. And I'm always up for a frosty beverage after dinner as well.
Please enter your name below if you are interested in meeting for dinner:
Name and Food Preference
Agenda Items
Please list agenda items of interest to you:Agenda Items: Follow Up from Meeting
1:1: Inclination to work with tablets vs. laptops, a few around the table going that way, many folks at the carts stage. Catherine Cook, Lake Forest Country Day doing tablets and so far, so good. Pairing tablets with wireless projectors a winner. Other schools that haven't started down that road yet are seeing more kids bringing laptops of their own each year and may have lost the initiative to do a formal program. As laptops/iPhones price drops make it more like a commodity, and cloud computing renders platform choice irrelevant, some school will arrive at 1:1 eventually without doing a program per se.
Keith Gillette did a nice overview of Netbooks, a preview of his presentation tomorrow at IASBO/IL-TCE joint event in Naperville.
They are gaining market share quickly and performance specs are far advanced from the original OLPC model. He sees a place for them as a cloud computing appliance that may be particularly well suited for younger kids due to the form factor.
Little iPhone impact on schools as yet. More licenses for WebSense and longer lines outside the Dean's office are reported.
Interactive whiteboards: Several school installing them in all classrooms or in the process of. Latin recommends saving big $$ by doing the installs yourself if you can and mounting them at lower heights for younger kids...they build a plywood step covered with carpeting to help kids get up to board level. Schools with tablets and wireless projectors get the interactivity they're looking for without the whiteboards; software like DyKnow increases usability. Curt recommended attending the
InfoComm conference, the a/v industry's mega conference, for the best way to get training and talk to all the big a/v vendors directly.
Just a little feedback about Blackbaud web-based hosting, and it was good.
Some discussion of enabling parent access to online gradebooks. No one really doing it, some because it hasn't come up, others because it has and they decided not to. Some schools moving toward saving grade report mailing by opening interim and quarter/semester grade reports to parents for a limited time window and not
in real time all the time.
Curt recommended the Basecamp project management suite, an online tool offered by 37signals.com . Great design, good functionality, intuitive navigation, can invite "clients" in to collaborate on project. A great package for a small to medium sized workgroup to manage IT projects. Easy email integration, RSS, iCal...Curt would recommend it anyway, but also is an affiliate who gets a finder's fee if subscribers go through him.
Curt would also be happy to organize an LMAIS social gathering during NAIS here in Chicago this winter. Let him know if you are interested.
NEXT MEETING: April 16, 2009, tentatively hosted by Lake Forest Academy (thanks, Dave).
Also a big plug for these events:
k12 Online Conference : great look at web 2.0, lots of support for newbies, many activities both synchronous/asynchronous, and FREE!!!
http://notk12onlineconference.org / is the "unconference" companion to k12online
Day Plan
Attendees